Happy Endings
by Magery
Summary: Because you don't always get what you deserve.


The shadows are darker when he's not there, and it doesn't make any fucking sense because it's not like she needs him or anything. She's managed perfectly well on her own up until now, and so what if he's off saving the world or some shit when she wakes up struggling for breath in the middle of her empty bed and there's nobody there to hold her and lie and say it's going to be okay?

She's stronger than this, and sometimes she hates him for making her human. For making her care. He's made absence hurt; he's burned his way into her soul, reaching, grasping, taking taking taking everything she has to give and she sounds like a fucking romance novelist but that doesn't change the fact she feels like there's something missing when he's gone away.

And one day she knows he won't come back, that one day everything will be just a little bit too much, that one day he'll fall and he'll be gone and she'll hate him almost as much as she loves him because then she'll be broken and the world won't make any fucking sense because he won't be in it.

Sometimes she hopes that day will come soon, because at least then her life will be constant; the pain won't be as suddenly sharp when it contrasts with the happiness and the sense that everything in her life is going right for once when before it was a fucking trainwreck and the only reason she's not dead is because the universe doesn't seem to think she was worth the effort; Collectors, Reapers, even her own fucking father, she knows deep down there's no difference between her and anyone else so the fact she's still alive is simply because she got _lucky_. At least that way, she won't slowly be associating happiness with despair, yin and yang melting together like acid through flesh, like the fused monstrosities of her nightmares.

But a part of her knows the pain will only get worse if he's gone—she might hate the dependence, no different to the addicts she's seen in the past, except he doesn't need a needle to get under her skin—because then she'll know that he'll _never_ return, never be able to hope that he'll move heaven and hell and everything in between to get back to her side because somehow he needs her too in the way fire needs oxygen, in the way shadows need the light. And so even though she doesn't believe, because if there was such a thing as a merciful God he'd have sent her to hell long ago, sometimes she catches herself praying that he'll come back one more time.

There's a knock at the door and her hand lunges for the pistol under her pillow because old habits die hard and it doesn't hurt that the world knows they're together. She's lost count of the number of times they've tried to use her to get to him; he's the fucking saviour of the galaxy, but that doesn't stop some of them until they learn through broken bones and spines and bullet-riddled flesh that they were called _Reapers_ and he still ended them – he won't be beaten by some jackass with a gun and attitude, and neither will she.

She approaches cautiously, gun in hand and calling on her biotics, looking through the little eye-hole in the door he installed himself, and it was so fucking cute to watch because he was so earnest and hands that killed became hands that made until she jumped him right there and they became hands that _un-_made too. She can't see much detail, but the man outside seems to be wearing a uniform and it looks military and his hat is held in front of him with both hands and _oh no no fuck no no no anything but that._

She opens the door, pistol dropping from nerveless fingers, clattering to the floor because if he's dead it's not like there's anything really left for her and she never notices the knife hidden behind the hat until it's plunged into her stomach one twice three times and she collapses, blood bubbling out like she's a freshwater spring and she would be fucking angry at herself for such a prissy description except right now she can't really feel anything except _pain_.

The last thing she sees is him, shocked horror dawning on his face like the inevitability of death as he looks on from the other side of the sidewalk, carrying a bunch of crimson roses. Loose petals dance in the wind, and Miranda Lawson's last train of thought wonders if he really did know how much she secretly liked flowers.


End file.
